Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/401

Rh with, us in their every-day importance; and their power of molding social conditions once recognized, the very important query may be considered if they could not be possibly so improved as to secure to the average individual means of subsistence outside of his general culture and the acknowledged moral improvement resulting from it.

Adaptation of general training to the presumable needs and wants of the individual, rather than to his social requirements, is the programme of the new education that has already modified the old-school routine through the introduction of the psychological basis, and which now proposes manual training as one more step forward. Tried on purely empirical bases, many inductions have been arrived at; still, a general deduction is yet wanted, before the measure proposed would be worthy of a true pedagogical interest.

The pleas for manual training as an educational measure are many, and as the methods employed in instruction must necessarily depend upon the end expected, it may not be amiss to examine at least the leading theories.

Such a critique, nevertheless, based upon the campaign words, if we may so call them, of the different advocates, in the absence of a full exposition of their views, must be made rather in the form of suggestion than otherwise. Thus, the first purpose encountered is that of the development of perceptions. One would assume a psychological basis, if the age of the pupil corresponded with the programme in view; but in the present application perceptions mean sharpness of the sensorium, the first stage of mental growth in the child, generally expected to have been accomplished in the Kindergarten; afterward objective teaching in the elements of natural sciences, aided by collections, etc., would do just as well, and, moreover, would produce as a beneficial result certain general knowledge not obtainable from the simple manipulation of tools.

2. "The use of the hand and brain" is a general figure that is certain to be found on every page treating of industrial training. It would do very well indeed if the brains were necessarily taken into co-operation; but such a general programme depends too much upon the system employed. It will be found entirely unsatisfactory if the means applied be confined to a so-called series of graded exercises in wood or metal work—say crosscut, rip-saw, nailing, gauging, squaring, etc.—followed, as they generally are, by the x y number of joints about the practical use of which the pupil generally remains in the dark. Brains, if considered independently from their owner, are too apt to be subject to the general law of inertia, and the whole occupation may simply be reduced to an automatic mechanism, especially if it is connected